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234
ART AND WAR
patriotic. We are not masters of our fate ;
not only have we got hold of what we believe
to be the greatest thing in the world, the
greatest thing in the world has got hold of us.
A crisis has divided the sheep from the
goats I care not on which hand I am marshalled
and now we know who are the people
that love art because they must and who love
it because they think they ought to. I am
making no moral judgment I am ; pointing
"
out merely that those who say This is no
time to think about art " admit that for them
thinking or not thinking about art is a matter
of choice. I have always supposed that it
was perfectly well with one who had lost
himself in an ecstasy of creation or contemplation.
How can he be better off who has
already attained beatitude ? To invite such
a one to
relinquish the best and bestir himself
about what may be a means to good seems to
me absurd. That has always been my opinion
and I cannot conceive the circumstances that
would compel me to it. change Those who
reject it, those who deny that certain states
of mind, amongst which is the state of aesthetic
contemplation, are alone good as ends, will
find themselves in an intellectual position which
appears to me untenable : I shall not quarrel
with them, however, so long as they leave us
alone and refrain from cant. According to